


so tied together

by misantlery



Category: A Matter of Oaths - Helen S. Wright
Genre: Future Fic, Immortality, M/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 16:12:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16957242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misantlery/pseuds/misantlery
Summary: Rallya, Rafe, and Joshim all deal with the new revelation about who and what Rafe really is in their own ways.





	so tied together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [girlmarauders](https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlmarauders/gifts).



Give Ayvar “a few tens of years” to break news of Rafe’s probable immortality to him? Not likely, thought Rallya. She didn’t care that Ayvar was an Emperor. This, she told herself, was web business, and Emperors had no business sticking their noses in that, especially when said Emperors weren’t webbers.

Rafe needed to know. Ayvar thought it a kindness to not tell him, to give him more time as a mortal, but by Ryalla’s reckoning, Rafe had had more than enough deaths already to take him beyond the small, singular life’s orbit of your average mortal. What number life was he on, three? Four? There was Yuellin’s capture and presumed death, then there was the supposed fatal shuttle accident, and then the identity wipe, and then the death she herself had faked for him...Yes, Rafe had more than his fair share of deaths, and lives, and Rallya could only hope that he would remember as much as the years of his immortality piled upon him. Surely such intimate knowledge of death could only improve an immortal’s disposition. Or it could make him end up like mad Julur, she supposed.

Well, better to know now rather than later. _A few tens of years_ , scoffed Rallya to herself. _As if there is any wisdom in waiting that long_.

And, she thought, it wasn’t as if the Emperor had _ordered_ her to keep her silence, nor had he bound her with any oaths. The smug satisfaction of safely eeling through her entangled commitments and duties bubbled up in her, not unlike the satisfaction of winning a bout in a tactics workout. Yes, she would tell Rafe, and she would do so with a clear conscience.

* * *

Rallya was, of course, sensitive enough to the current state of general upheaval to wait for matters to cool down and stabilize before unleashing her knowledge on Rafe. In fact, she waited an entire _year_ , enough time to settle into her own bedamned desk duty role as Guild Commander, and enough time for Rafe to be well-established with his Three as Commander of _Bhattya_. It took some mild subterfuge to get him alone for a meeting without his Webmaster/lover; anything to do with the ship would have led to Joshim tagging along, and the same for anything to do with the Guild. But if there was one thing that made Joshim wrinkle his nose and find some very important Webmaster duties to attend to, it was aristo squabbles for power, so Rallya chose that as her excuse for a one-on-one meeting with Rafe.

The next time _Bhattya_ was at Central Station, she intercommed Rafe.

“Come have a meal with your old commander, I need to pick your brain,” she demanded.

“And lovely to see you too, Rallya. How are you?” asked Rafe with a smile that she refused to categorize as indulgent. 

“Perfectly well, as you can see. Now, will you come or not?”

“That depends, what knowledge do you need to extract from my poor brain?”

“The knowledge of just what goes through an aristo’s damned head is what,” she said, then launched into a mostly true diatribe on her latest tangle with the New Emperor’s court, and their excessive demands on the Guild.

“Ah,” said Rafe once she wound down. “Yes, I could provide some insight.” He looked off screen, and the sudden softening in his eyes gave away that it was probably Joshim he was looking at. Joshim who was probably grimacing or making vehement _no_ gestures in response to Rallya’s invitation. “Joshim has a training session with some juniors, but I can join you for dinner this evening.”

“Who said this evening? I meant lunch tomorrow,” said Rallya perversely, just to see if Joshim had another excuse handy for that.

Rafe certainly did; his eyes didn’t even waver, nor did his eyelashes flutter when he blithely lied, “Ah, Joshim is regrettably engaged in a tactics workout then. But I can be available.”

“I’ll catch up with him later,” said Rallya. “But you show up for lunch tomorrow.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

* * *

Rallya didn’t want to spoil their fine meal with any dramatic displays, so she spent most of the lunch drawing out Rafe’s aristo insights, and only over the post-meal alcad did she get to the real reason she’d arranged for this meeting.

“Now, I hope you have enough sense not to pitch a fit over this, but I think you ought to know: you are immortal.”

“Excuse me?” asked Rafe, as politely and blandly as if he'd assumed he'd just misheard her words.

“In case you were wondering why exactly two Emperors are insane about you, it’s not your pretty face, fetching though it is. You are as immortal as they are," she said, and watched the knowledge break over his face. "That is why Julur was so reluctant to kill you, even when it was clearly the smarter option.”

Rafe set his glass of alcad down with a thud, a graceless gesture that spoke volumes about how much she’d shocked him. That was enough of a rarity that Rallya felt an admittedly inappropriate trill of glee that was altogether too childlike for a woman of her years.

“How could you possibly know that,” said Rafe, his voice gone low and furious.

“I had it from Ayvar, after I guessed it myself,” she said. “Now, he wanted to wait a few tens of years to tell you, but I thought that was nonsense, so here we are.”

Rafe was downright gray-faced now. Rallya hoped he wouldn’t swoon or have any other such attention-getting dramatics. He didn’t, thankfully, instead just hiding his face with his hands for a long moment. Fair enough. She let him have a full minute and a half to have quiet hysterics or whatever, before judging it long enough. Any longer and he’d spiral into unproductive panic.

“My condolences on your condition,” she offered dryly, and he looked up. “There are practicalities to consider. Joshim, of course, who I trust you will not be cruel to in light of this knowledge.”

“Of course I wouldn’t-”

“And there is the Guild.”

“What.”

“Keep up, Rafe. I know you have all the time in the universe, but the rest of us are not so lucky. If you decide to set yourself up as a new Emperor, I hope you will do me the kindness of waiting until after I’m dead, but I want to make clear that alive or dead, I want no immortal in command of the Guild.”

Rafe frowned, and some of his natural color came back. “An immortal, heading the Guild…” He shook his head. “No, that would not do, the balance of powers…”

“Exactly. The Guild would only become another Empire. We’ve enough of those.”

“And you, what, want my word that I would never…?”

“An Oath. I will record it with whatever secrecy you require for now, but at some point, I will want an Oath to that effect, Rafe.”

“As we both well know, oaths can be broken.”

“Not without consequence. And I will ensure that there _would_ be consequences. I like you Rafe, I do. The _Bhattya_ is in good hands with you. _Joshim_ is in good hands with you. You haven’t let me or your web down yet. But I do not know who you will become in hundreds of years, or in thousands.”

His ego likely didn’t need the praise, but she’d just given him some momentous news so she might as well chase the hefty dose of bitterness with some sweetness.

“Yes, of course. Can you give me some time to…”

“Get your affairs in order?”

“As you say.”

“Yes, we’ve enough time for that, I’m sure. Now, an immortal webber! That’s something, isn’t it? I don’t know whether to be terrified or excited for the possibilities…”

* * *

After his lunch with Rallya, Rafe took a long walk around Central Station.

Immortal. Part of him wasn’t surprised. Rallya was right to have guessed it herself; it explained too much, too well, most especially Julur’s madness when it came to Rafe, and of course Ayvar’s willingness to let him go. But if Ayvar had known, then why had he clung so tightly all those nights they’d spent together…?

That was a question for another time. Part of Rafe wanted to go storm Ayvar’s palace to demand answers, to rail at him for keeping this knowledge from him, but what use would that do now? If Ayvar had planned to give him tens of years to live free of immortality’s burden, then Rafe would damn well use that time.

_You’ll come to me when you can?_ Ayvar had asked last year, and Rafe had said _yes_. And so he would. When this life ran itself out, when his status became too difficult to ignore, he would go to Ayvar. He would ask Ayvar all the questions he never had before, he would demand new ways to live an uncounted span of years.

But until then he would cling tight to what he had: _Bhattya_ , and the web, and most of all, Joshim.

* * *

He told Joshim right away, of course. He’d be useless in the web until he did, half-certain as he was that the new knowledge and the hiding of it would turn corrosive and poisonous there, stretching out along the lines that linked all of them. If he was going to get through this with his sanity intact, he wanted to keep the web for as long as possible. Joshim had to know, as his Webmaster, as one of his Three, and as his lover.

But Rafe could be selfish enough for one last round of loving, where both of them were as mortal as they could be, where this new knowledge was meaningless. If Rafe’s fervent ardor surprised Joshim, he didn’t let on.

“Rallya told me something today,” said Rafe, his head on Joshim’s chest as Joshim idly stroked at his curls.

They had a few hours before Rafe was due for his shift in the web, but the gentle rise and fall of Joshim’s chest under him made him want to skip his shift and stay right here.

“Yes, I gathered. Seems to have gotten your blood up, not that I have any objections.”

“What she told me...it helped make sense of a lot of things I’ve been wondering about. About Ayvar, and Julur. About me.”

“Oh? Did she find some new twist in the court power struggles?”

“I’m immortal.”

Joshim’s chest stopped rising and falling for what felt like a too long moment. Then Rafe felt him take in a deep, slow breath.

“Ah. Yes. That does make sense of...many things.”

Rafe was too much of a coward to lift his head and look Joshim in the face. The echo of Ayvar might be too strong for him right now. So he stayed down.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he pleaded.

“That I understand why Julur didn’t simply kill you. He must be lonely, even in his madness...and that I know why Ayvar let you go now.” Joshim’s words were heavy, but any sting in them was eased by the kiss Joshim pressed to Rafe’s head. “That I’m...glad you will have him. I think.”

“But I want _you_ ,” said Rafe, plaintively, childishly.

He felt, suddenly, the seductive and dangerous lure of the desire to keep things in stasis, unchanging, the urge to build himself a world so steady that it would not ever shift or falter or change.

“Forever?” asked Joshim, and Rafe could hear the smile in his voice.

“Maybe,” whispered Rafe, and let himself be drawn up into a kiss, long and deep and breathtaking.

When he broke free, he finally had the courage to look Joshim in the eye. There was grief there, for Rafe’s mortality, for the eventual loss of their life together. But there was acceptance too, and peace, of the sort on Joshim’s face when he made his prayers to Arura.

“Then find me in the next life.”

* * *

Two hundred and ten years later, Rafe did.

He looked for his dead in every new face he saw, even as Ayvar disapproved. _You must learn to let go_ , Ayvar always said. Maybe so. But even when he didn’t find his dead in those new faces, he found something else: new joys and new sorrows, new friends and new webmates. He didn’t think anything would come of his quest, truly. Didn’t know how he would even know if it did. Faith had never come easy to him.

Until one day, as he gathered his flimsies from the lecture he’d just given on the new distributed web-pod systems, he saw her. He saw her, and he knew: it was Joshim’s soul lighting those unfamiliar blue-green eyes.

“Sir? I’m sorry to bother you, I just had a question about the node structures of a distributed web-pod system…”

When they locked eyes, all the nervous tension in her shoulders dropped away and she smiled, as if in recognition. She had, Rafe noted distantly, freckles all over her light brown cheeks.

“My name is Michal,” she said, and tilted her head in a gesture that was equal parts charming and uncertain. “Have some alcad with me?”

“Yes,” said Rafe, and felt as safely held in the universe’s palm as he was in the web. He nearly fell to his knees to offer his thanks to Arura’s mercy right then and there. “Yes, Michal, I’d love to. My name is Rafe,” he said, though he’d just been lecturing under the name Lin Bhattya.

“You know, I think I already knew that,” said Michal with wonder.


End file.
